Gold and Silver for France

France won two Gold Awards and one Silver Award at the 2014 New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOCC). The three French pro­duc­ers were rewarded for the sub­lime qual­ity of their best fruity green olive oil — three small- to medium-sized pro­duc­ers who sub­mit­ted their oils to the huge New York com­pe­ti­tion for the first time.

From Seillans, an ancient vil­lage in Provence, Gilles and Brigitte Stalenque run the fam­ily busi­ness pro­duc­ing around 3,000 liters of Domaine Stalenq extra vir­gin olive oil per year on their 5 hectare prop­erty. The cou­ple has only recently started enter­ing com­pe­ti­tions and in one year has won 5 Gold and 3 Silver Awards in France. They are excited with their first inter­na­tional suc­cess, proud of their fruity green which the judges described as robust with aro­mas of green fruit, green grass, tomato and notes of tomato.

Brigitte Stalenque said:

“We’re not as well known as big olive oil pro­duc­ers but we’re always sold out by July and our cus­tomers keep com­ing back to us. We’re very happy to win this reward espe­cially as we’re only a small domaine in a lit­tle Provençal vil­lage. Even the mayor of Seillans is proud of what we’ve achieved.”

Producer Frederique Pinatel from Domaine Salvator won a Gold Award with Cuvée Paradis which he described as ​“robust oil made with one sin­gle vari­ety with aro­mas of green grass, green bananas, pears and fresh almonds.” He said that his oil reflected the ter­roir of Haute Provence and the fam­ily know-how from five gen­er­a­tions. Olive Oil from Domaine Salvator has been win­ning pro­fes­sional olive oil com­pe­ti­tions in France since 1977.

From the Baux de Provence Laurent Bélorgey pro­duces La Lieutenante, an ele­gant extra vir­gin olive oil which won a Silver Award. An engi­neer by pro­fes­sion, Laurent gave up his job as a banker in Luxembourg to man­age 48 hectares and 13,000 olive trees, a deci­sion he does not regret.

“La Lieutenante has won many awards in France over the years but win­ning in New York means so much; it’s great for our work to be rec­og­nized and to attract inter­na­tional cus­tomers. It’s par­tic­u­larly moti­vat­ing and stim­u­lat­ing for those who work in the orchard, to all the team. We are very happy and will most cer­tainly be enter­ing the New York Olive Oil Competition next year.”

Among the inter­na­tional panel of judges tast­ing the col­lec­tion of over 650 olive oil sam­ples from some 25 coun­tries was Fabienne Roux, direc­tor of the French High School of Olive Oil Tasting. She said the com­pe­ti­tion was car­ried out with all seri­ous­ness and pro­fes­sion­al­ism vital to suc­cess, very good orga­ni­za­tion with even bet­ter tast­ing con­di­tions than last year.

“We had some good sur­prises as best of class,” Roux said. ​“Even if we are expe­ri­enced tasters we were at times cap­ti­vated by aro­mas and fla­vors like chil­dren dis­cov­er­ing some­thing very new and excit­ing.”

Roux said she enjoyed shar­ing her French vision of tast­ing extra vir­gin olive oil in a culi­nary set­ting with the other judges. What did she par­tic­u­larly enjoy?

“Living for one week together with such inter­est­ing and knowl­edge­able peo­ple dis­cussing olive oil from break­fast until late at night.”